The study involved 12 Association of Health Center Affiliated Health Plans, which serve mostly Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Program patients. AHCAHP represents more than 25 percent of all such patients nationally.

Two-thirds of the health plans surveyed report using information technology to generate preventive health reminders that are sent directly to patients. Eighty-three percent said IT helps them communicate clinical guidelines and protocols to plan providers.

Yet most of these messages go out the old-fashioned way — via printed newsletter or form letter — rather than by e-mail or Web site, say the study’s authors.

Nearly all of the health plans say they use their Web site to communicate general preventive health information to their patients, but few evaluate their Web site’s effect or traffic. The plans’ administrators also say there are few incentives in place to encourage greater connectivity between IT systems and few staff or funds to improve IT-based preventive services.

None of the plans surveyed for the report can download information from electronic patient records or providers’ secure databases, which hold “tremendous promise for improving the delivery of preventive health care services and reducing medical errors,” the authors say.

To read the full report, go to here (PDF).